The Village-to-Village Project
The EU-funded project that linked Enontekio, Kittila, Kolari and Muonio with serviced village-to-village routes through the park.
One of Lapland's tourism strategies is to develop high quality products for international summer visitors by combining the services of resorts and villages in the municipalities of Enontekiö, Kittilä, Kolari and Muonio and in the Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park. The project set out to direct more overnight visitors to the services in the villages around the elongated park.
- Health centre and dentist accessible to EU health card holders at local rates
- Veterinary clinic open weekdays; dog hotel available for day trips to Norway
- Library, launderette, banks, garages and free wifi at the municipality building
- Polar Lento flying service to fell lakes and Swedish Lapland (30+ years)
- Local taxi services across Hetta and Enontekio
The Village-to-Village Park Project
The Pallas-Yllästunturi National Park is one of Finland's oldest (75 years) and most popular. This part of Lapland has the freshest air in Europe, superb viewpoints for the Northern Lights and Finland's first hiking trail, from 1934, so the fell and wilderness huts along its length are part of both Finnish cultural and natural heritage.
Most visitors currently sleep in wilderness huts along the main routes, yet there is plenty of comfortable lodging in the villages nearby. The project therefore introduced an international village-to-village, service-to-service model of hiking and trekking, encouraging walkers to travel with just a small backpack and use the accommodation and attractions on the park's periphery.
- Marketing: cooperation between local entrepreneurs and the national park makes those services easier to market
- Funding: the EU Social and Regional Development Fund, the Lapland Centre for Economic Development and the Environment and the Regional Council of Lapland, together with the municipalities involved (Enontekiö, Kittilä, Kolari and Muonio), the Forest and Park services and over one hundred entrepreneurs for whom sustainable tourism development is a matter of the heart
- More information: at www.luontoon.fi, where the list of participating companies is a good guide to services across the greater region
- Routes and signs: one target outcome was an improved network of routes and services for summer visitors, with new high-quality signs erected along many roads to open up the park and a recommended 'Fell Lapland Village-to-Village Journey'
- Trail repairs: worn hiking trails and bridges were improved between 2013 and 2015 with wear-resistant gravel and crushed stone, and some old duckboards were replaced with an innovative material made of 6m-long steel elements
- Boardwalks: the park has nearly 40 miles of wooden boardwalks, on average over 15 years old, so maintaining them is beyond normal means. The new material should last 200 years, far preferable, even if less natural looking, to trampling the last of Finland's large pines into the swamp